Canberra Close Up: Alison Alder

Alison Alder is a visual artist and CEO of Canberra's Megalo Print Studio and Gallery.

Her career in the arts spans nearly three decades and has included working in political poster making workshops in Canberra, Wollongong and Sydney and managing aboriginal art enterprises in the Northern Territory. Her art works have appeared in exhibitions at the NGA, the Art Gallery of NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art, to name a few.

While a keen art lover in her teens, she told Alex Sloan on Canberra Close Up, her first choice of a career was as a Dental Therapist.

"My mother was a bit worried about art as a career so when I left school, interestingly enough, I went and did dental therapy ... And part of that was because as a 'Commonwealth Girl,' as we were known, you got to move to Hobart and train in Hobart and I thought that sounded pretty exciting."

It didn't take long however for her interest to wane and she returned to Canberra to enrol in Art School, supporting herself by working as a dental assistant. Interestingly, it was this job, she told Alex Sloan, that inspired her political thinking.

"I learnt about the role of women in the workplace, about unionism and about how women weren't afforded the same opportunities as men and it set me up thinking about the injustices of the world."

In her last year of Art School - with unemployment in Canberra hovering around 20% - she was involved in setting up a screen printing workshop that was designed to give young people skills, and from this Megalo was born.

"One of the first posters that was commissioned for Megalo to make, was commissioned by Nugget Coombs, Judith Wright and Stewart Harris for the Aboriginal Treaty Committee and I just think that's an amazing legacy."

In the 33 years since, Megalo has produced around 600 works, and Alison Alder says they tell an amazing story of Canberra.

"I can't tell you what an incredibly interesting and diverse story these picture tell because it was such a big form of communication. There was no social media and there was also enormous issues happening at the time like the Aids crisis and the criminalisation of rape and incest for example.

"So there are a lot of posters about some pretty heavy and grizzly subjects but at the same time there are some posters that are just so funny and so humorous."

"It is an incredible picture of Canberra as a place to live, Canberra as a place of community, not as a seat of government and it is quite an unusual picture."

Megalo is in the process of publishing a book on the history of the organisation that will be released in the next few months.